Words, Words, Words!

After putting it aside for a few weeks, when I plunged in again with Hugh Laurie's book, The Gun Seller, I began to notice a certain similarity of style to another book that was full of words, a book written centuries ago entitled The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, by Laurence Sterne.  This book, a serial that started in 1759, is known for its multiple digressions and mixed-up chronological order, both traits that make it hard to read today. Yet once you get into it, it is rather strangely entertaining and funny--as long as you don't expect it to be like a normal narrative. It was the style of Sterne's book that came back to me when I began reading Laurie's book, to the point that I wondered if he consciously imitated Sterne, or whether it's simply a traditional British way of writing comedy.  Here's a sample from Tristram Shandy:

I wish either my father or my mother, or indeed both of them, as they were in duty both equally bound to it, had minded what they were about when they begot me; had they duly consider'd how much depended upon what they were then doing;—that not only the production of a rational Being was concerned in it, but that possibly the happy formation and temperature of his body, perhaps his genius and the very cast of his mind;—and, for aught they knew to the contrary, even the fortunes of his whole house might take their turn from the humours and dispositions which were then uppermost;—Had they duly weighed and considered all this, and proceeded accordingly,—I am verily persuaded I should have made a quite different figure in the world, from that in which the reader is likely to see me.—

You may have noticed that the above quote is a single sentence; indeed, it is the first sentence in the book.  Can you see the resemblance with Laurie's narrative?

Of course, any book that begins in this way is going to present challenges.  One of the challenges, in my opinion, is that such attention paid to words makes readers very much aware that they are reading a book, and that the book is fiction. With such a style, you can't entirely suspend disbelief and get immersed in the action. Reading Tristram Shandy or The Gun Seller is like sitting in a theater, trying to enjoy a play, but the person next to you is constantly poking you in the ribs, saying, "Did you get that? Isn't that a riot?" It makes for slow going, to say the least.

I'm finally getting to the part where there is some action, however.  I'll write more about that later.